Like this:

Since I’m always on about aesthetic perfection in everything, I’m going to write a paragraph about the importance of bass in Black Metal. Bass is not only unnecessary but also unwanted in Black Metal. I don’t listen to Black Metal for the bass lines, and I dislike hearing the bass, unless it’s some genius like Varg Vikernes who knows exactly what to play, and even more importantly, what not to play, when not to play, how not… you get it. I attempted to emulate Varg’s bass-thetical perfection on The Darkness Of Being, but there’s something far greater about In The Name Of Satan: the bass can’t be heard. Because bass prevents you from enjoying true Black Metal. Bass is to Black Metal what Rob Trujillo is to Metallica; you wonder if it is aware it’s a complete misfit. The only role bass has in the frosty kingdom of Black Metal is to provide warmth to the fuzzy sound when the icy guitars need a rest. Bass sounds good if you can feel it and realize the band has a bassist, not if it’s muffling the rest of the band and keeping Black Metal from being raw. Unless the bass is evil and is making your Black Metal even more majestic because of how it sounds in the howling wind, this is what it needs to be: inaudible.

Bollywood has done a great service to religion with this little film called Oh My God, which is based on a play called Krishan vs Kanhaiya, which is based on a movie called The Man Who Sued God.

Paresh Rawal plays Kanji Lalji Mehta, a Gujarati businessman who happens to be an atheist. Not only is Kanjibhai an atheist, but he also has antitheistic views just like me and some other amazing people I know. That excludes all of you who are shit-scared to accept the truth because you don’t want to rub the rest of your herd the wrong way and want to continue living a lie.

Kanjibhai openly mocks the religious ways of society, making fun of each and every ritual, wasting no opportunity to taunt the sheep. His shop, which sells idols of deities to sheep like you, is destroyed in an earthquake, and the insurance company refuses to pass his claim, citing the destruction of his property as an act of god.

Seeing no way out of the mess, Kanjibhai decides to take on god, and is helped by Hanif Qureshi (Om Puri), who happens to be a believer who believes in giving nonbelievers their right to not believe in higher powers, unlike the rock/metal indie websites we have in India, who refuse to write about my kickass Black Metal band Solar Deity, even though we are kicking major ass with a third EP on the way and are contributing infinitely more to the underground music scene than these websites who can at the most publish press releases about which trendcore poseur band has entered the studio, even if they entered the studio a year ago and still haven’t put any music out. Please continue writing about who won some pointless ‘metal award’ given to them by a magazine which nobody buys and can’t tell Metallica from Megadeth and gets mostly losers – who, forget judging, aren’t qualified to even discuss music – as their jury, because people outside the country have discovered us and we’re more than cool with that.

I would.

Anyway, since Kanjibhai Mehta doesn’t have god’s address, he takes godmen to court. Mithun Chakraborty as a highly effeminate sadhu; Govind Namdeo as a hot-headed swami; a Christian priest who has little or no say most of the time; a maulvi who fails to make an impression; and a hot bitch I would mate with immediately form the team fighting against Kanji.

Kanjibhai uses logic and reasoning to turn religion and everything about it you believe on its head and proves that all you’ve done in your pathetic life in the name of religion was a bloody joke. I love this movie.

Akshay Kumar, also the producer of Oh My God, is Lord Krishna in the movie. He comes on a Harley-Davidson and does a few stunts that will remind you of Ghost Rider. He is a silent spectator for most part, helping Kanji when he has to, agreeing with him all the time when Kanji tells the court and people that one doesn’t need to do anything at all to prove their faith, and that in fact rituals have only a negative impact on society.

I would.

Oh My God is a miracle of a movie that entertains while educating, and while it at no point tells you that there is no god (that would have been the icing on the cake for me), it knocks into the viewer’s head what this blog and some highly intelligent people have been telling you all along: that everything you do in the name of god is a fucking waste because you could actually spend all that time and money doing something truly productive, or if not that, something less detrimental to society.

So all you ‘thinkers’ who as much as join your hands in obeisance: Fuck you all, I hate you all wholeheartedly, and if you all died I would be extremely happy and would throw a party. You are unfit for life because of your mental disease, your addiction to fear, your suffering from the greatest cancer of all. Go watch Oh My God, and shove your favourite one up your ass.

A former smoker, on the ineffectiveness of bans and the vulnerability of their targets

It’s astonishing how laws in our country struggle to be implemented. The ban on smoking in public fizzled out in a few months and everybody smokes everywhere. Thanks to the nonsmokers who refused to put up with the inconvenience of inhaling other people’s smoke, restaurateurs had to keep at least a part of their establishments a smoke-free zone. As a former smoker, and one who inhaled a lot of smoke that came from burning tobacco, ganja leaves and hashish, I have no problem when people smoke around me.

Strangely, only gutkha is being targeted whereas smoking tobacco has been proved to be as harmful. How much more or less smoking cigarettes damage a person than chewing gutkha does, I don’t know, but we all know it’s dangerous as hell. The recent ban on gutkha, just like the ban on smoking in public, went limp in a matter of weeks. Tabloids got their kicks running stories about how easy it was to procure the banned substance, and people will find a way to get what they want. They always do.

I may be way off-base, but I think the larger bracket of the gutkha-chewing group doesn’t know that it can protest for its right to freely buy and consume the stuff, considering cigarette smokers only need to be 100 meters away from schools and colleges to purchase a pack of smokes. Those addicted to gutkha don’t know they can vent their anger networking sites and tell the government ‘aap chutiye hain’ by tweeting like retards. They don’t know that they can stage a public protest for their right to chew what others can smoke.

Those supporting the ban on gutkha understand this on a subconscious level, or they would be pushing for a ban on cigarettes as well, considering both these products that aren’t beneficial in any way and are competing to be the first to give you cancer are sold in the same shop. We understand too well how powerful the tobacco lobby is, for if it weren’t, people would be buying hash and grass and readymade joints instead of wasting money on poison that doesn’t get them high.

Speaking of drugs: I haven’t done drugs in a year and a half and I can still take you to a place to score decent ganja from and a friend who will give you a contact for charas. Even acid isn’t very difficult to get, so if illegal substances that were never legal are easy to get, we can’t expect addicts used to buying their hourly kick on the street to give up their habit, and certainly not on account of how bad for their health it is, because smoking a cigarette or beedi is far worse as others have to put up with it.

India really needs to stop playing these childish games to entertain itself, because no ban has ever worked, or will, unless the laws get strict and the punishment gets harsh. On the contrary, banning has made the banned more precious. All that is banned or illegal is now done at higher costs. Prostitution, dance/ladies bars, public smoking, gutkha consumption, and the sale of alcohol on dry days – it’s all on, it had never stopped, and it gives the people a different kind of high.